BWCA settlement could date back 16,400 years

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Oct 7, 2013 at 9:55 am

ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) Researchers at St. Cloud State University say they have reason to believe that a site in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was home to a settlement as long as 16,400 years ago, which would make the habitation the oldest in Minnesota.

They base it on testing of soil samples collected around Knife Lake, along the U.S.-Canada border. Athropologists want to do more testing before drawing firm conclusions.

Associate professor Mark Muñiz says it would fit with a theory that people lived along the edge of glaciers as they receded. It challenges previous beliefs that glacier-caused flooding in northern Minnesota caused the earliest humans to inhabit the south.

The excavation sites are believed to be where people quarried siltstone for tool-making.